


when tomorrow comes

by LiliaFax



Series: at the end of the day [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Harassment, M/M, Pale Prostitution, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Poverty, Self-Loathing, Species Discrimination, job discrimination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:58:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiliaFax/pseuds/LiliaFax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan is resigned. He will do what he has to in order to survive, but he knows that he can't hope for anything better. He has fucked up one too many times.</p><p>No one is coming to save him, he is sure of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when tomorrow comes

**Author's Note:**

> So this series has a Les Mis theme now. Because it makes sense in my head and I am constantly crying about Les Mis.
> 
> Don't worry, I'm doing something with the line "To love another person is to see the face of God"

_Do you hear the people sing?_  
 _Lost in the valley of the night_  
 _It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light_

\---

 

Work is one string of monotony, a single note melody all in quarter notes, and you are stuck pulling yourself through each moment, slow and hard. Your eyes flicker to the clock mounted on the wall as it ticks in perfect rhythm, and you count how many hours you have until your shift ends. Only a few hours, according to your quick calculations. You bring your focus back to the store in front of you. You work for a relatively large retailer, and from the cash register you can only see so far into the depth of the store. 

You watch as a human mother pushes her shopping cart full of home necessities, a large case of toilet paper, cleaners, and some clothes. A child sits in the front seat, babbling loudly and grabbing at their mother for attention that the mother gives in fleeting moments.

It doesn’t sting you anymore as she maneuvers to the register next to you, trying to seem oh so sneaky while she does it. You know why, she’s scared of what you’ll do to her child, you’ve seen enough parents react to you, even though you’re on the clock and would never do anything to compromise your position. 

She sets herself up in a way that blocks you completely from her child, which is really stupid you think, because if you wanted to you could tear through both her and the kid before anyone could stop you. You tap your fingers on the scanner and try to look disinterested in the goings on, at how empty your line is while you can see that your coworker is doing a decent amount of work. You try to see the upside to this.

“I can’t believe they hired one of them here.”

You locate the voice coming to your side, the side where the young mother went to check out and you turn to see another woman talking to her in the line.

You swallow, trying to get the lump out of your mouth before it can even really form.

“Well, that’s their own prerogative, I suppose,” the original mother says blandly.

“I’ve heard the reports and the news, Beth. They’re dangerous!”

The mother starts to load her cart onto the belt. “I know. I will take whatever path I need to keep Julia safe. Really, I don’t agree with it but I guess they need to work somewhere. We can’t waste tax dollars supporting them.”

“Just, can’t they work away from children, don’t you think?”

You turn away and try to block them out. You’ve heard similar conversations before, it’s really nothing new to you. But you have to keep your exposure to them to an absolute minimum, at least as minimum as you can make it, to keep your sanity.

You instead focus on the music playing over the system speakers. It’s a pretty simple song, by all accounts, and you have very little trouble losing yourself into the beat of the music. You can lull yourself away from the conversation next you and you see them leave the line with their carts full out of the corner of your eye. You let out a breath you didn’t even know you were holding deep in your chest. 

One potential disaster avoided.

You’re lucky that most people who hate you choose to ignore you, like those girls. Some days you doubt your ability to restrain yourself and let yourself seethe red as you hear them whisper like you aren’t right by them. 

A young man puts his purchases on your line and you quickly yank yourself out of any introspection you might have fallen into. You do your job easily with minimal words and efficient hands. The human man doesn’t question you or try to engage you and you appreciate it. You can ignore what is happening easily enough.

He nods and leaves you, carrying his bag of purchases. You blink and look over to see if anyone else was going to come to you.

There’s a small cluster of teenagers, you would place them at maybe seven sweeps (no, sixteen years, you are one Earth and they don’t use sweeps here) bunched up near the registers, exchanging snickers and hushed loud words that jumble together so their voices knot up. There seems to be an equal number of boys and girls, maybe leaning toward the boys, and they are all human. You wince. You don’t want to deal with this right now, especially not after that woman.

The game stole the remainder of your adolescence, maybe not wholly in the physical sense but in the emotional and mental sense, so you’ve never been able to fully relate to the human teenagers that come to the places you work. Except how you can see in them so vividly the shithead you were when you were six and it tears at you something awful. You hate them just for reminding you of your failure and you hate them for being obnoxious. Then you realize that the obnoxiousness that you hate is just a damn reflection of your own self and you hate them (and yourself) even more.

They tumble through the register, giggling the whole way, but at least they don’t make a scene. For that you are grateful, and you drown them out as you ring them up and let them go. One of the girls even thanks you when you hand her change over and even though you think it is just reflex, it is more than you get from grown adults in this store. But as your fingers brush against hers you can see the tendons of hers twitch and she pulls away too fast to even pretend she isn’t prejudiced as fuck. 

Part of you doesn’t blame her at this point. You’ve seen the news reports on troll crime, and even more so on highblood crime, but you also know from first hand experience the truth behind all those reports. Your beaten pride tries to tell you that those traits that are disparaged here on Earth are proper and just but you can’t see it anymore.

Most of your shift goes this way without disrupting you too bad. The occasional look here, the whisper there, the hesitant “thank you”s and “hello”s are nothing new to you nor are they of any consequence. You had worse at your last job, waiting tables at a diner, so you try not to complain, even though every fiber of your being wants to. (Keeping your tongue still is a skill you have had to pick up quickly if you want to survive, even though God knows you bitched nonstop as a wriggler). You count off the moments until the end of your shift in your head and try to mentally plan for the rest of the night. You don’t think you have to go out to work the corner tonight, your money situation is pretty good at the moment, but it wouldn’t hurt so that your regulars don’t loose interest. It’s very important to keep your customers interested in your line of business, even if you are a rarity, a highblood doing pale prostitution, what a shocker, and therefore less replaceable.

When your shift is done you go back to your employee locker and try to recover the little pieces of yourself you lose each day in every interaction. You are holding your locker door open and breathing deeply through your nose, trying to regain your frayed sanity, when one of your coworkers walks in.

He scoffs at you and hits one of the nearby lockers. The sound startles you badly as you are too wrapped up in your own mind to have been paying much attention to your surroundings. When you look up, he is leaning against the locker and glaring at you. You shrink back from his eyes.

“The fuck are you doing, troll,” he drawls.

“What do you want,” you say in measured breaths. You can’t afford to hurt him, you can’t afford to even raise your voice at him.

He slides up closer to you and you draw yourself back to get away, your fins flaring to get him away even though he won’t understand the signal. He laughs.

“God, you aliens are so weird. Look at you, marking your territory and all that.” He keeps laughing through his flat, ugly, human teeth. He moves in closer.

“You know, I’ve always wondered what you were doing here. Working this kind of job. I’ve been thinking about it real hard.”

You swallow the lump out of your throat, but you can’t get away and this man is not listening to any of your signals you have to get away fuck fuck fuck.

“Hey, look, the alien fish troll is growling. Aren’t you damn cute.” He puts his hand on your shoulder and you want to claw yourself out of your skin if only to get away.

The man’s voice takes a deep tone and his eyes turn harder, glinting fiercely at you. “Here’s the deal. I’ve got a family to feed. The economy is bad and it’s because of you stupid aliens. I need every penny I can get. And you are driving away business. You make people uncomfortable. I’m sure you can find some other way to make money. Just go sleep with people, I heard you fish people are all into weird shit. But get away from here. This is a nice place, we don’t need space invaders like you mucking the place up.”

“I’ve got as much of a right to be here as you do,” you say, your pride reasserting itself at the worst possible moment. You snap your mouth shut as soon as the words leave your mind and through your mouth. The man in front of your face slaps you across the face, leaving your cheek stinging. He has a strong hand, for a human.

Even though you try to push it back, your highblood rage also takes this moment to reassert itself. You push him off you and into the locker where he nearly crumples. He looks at you, terrified, as though he wasn’t the one threatening you just a few seconds ago. Your blood runs ice cold in your veins and you scramble up and away from him. You can’t hurt him, you’re going to lose your job.

But he just threatened you. Your hands shake as you press them to your face, your glasses pushing up strangely as you do. Your blood-pusher races in your ribcage. 

You have to report this.

 

\---

 

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Ampora, it isn’t against any law. Besides, I’m not sure it wasn’t as bad as you make it out to be,” your manager drawls, not even bothering to look at you as you try to report the man who harassed you.

“And I’m telling you it was.” You try to keep your growl out of your voice.

“There is nothing I can do for you. If anything, I would say that you have a history of instigating these kinds of things,” your manager says, still not looking and still ignoring you.

You fail to keep rage from bubbling up to the surface of your body. Perhaps your self-control is burned to ash from too many matches thrown its way, from the incendiary comments of the world but you just can’t care anymore. You somewhat register your manager’s mouth as it continues to move but no sound comes to your brain aside from the furious beating of your heart.

“Eridan, are you even listening to me?” The slap to your arm screams bloodlust down your synapses but you don’t let yourself act on it, just leap back from the touch like it is corrosive acid. 

Your voice is no longer under your control as you growl out, “Yeah, I am. You’re ignoring me, is what’s happening.”

“Eridan, I’ve tried to work with you. I believe in equal opportunity but you are making to difficult to do anything with you,” he smacks his lips and looks somewhat thoughtful. His nonchalance infuriates you. “My friends told me hiring a troll, a highblood no less, would be more work than it was worth, but I didn’t listen.”

“Considering how you are acting right now, and how you’ve acted in the past, I just might.”

You laugh and it sounds like scratches on tile, all high-pitched and noxious. “Well, try, but you can’t because I quit.”

You flip your middle finger to your (former) manager and storm out of the store all together, ignoring every look and scorn that is shot your way. You feel free and untethered, like your could lift off and fly away if you wanted to. You yell toward the sky, standing in the parking lot completely free of inhibition, letting your primal fears and desires and every poison of the world just leach out of you. Not even the angry honk of the cars make you want to move, so you just flip them off too and set off to grab your bike and make your way to your apartment as recklessly as you can.

You get home and formally send in your resignation, then get yourself so completely wasted you can’t even remember what you were so mad about in the first place. You lose yourself to the alcohol and reminisce on how it feels to not hate yourself so viscerally for one damn moment in your life

 

\---

The gravity of what you've just done doesn't hit you until you wake up the next morning and realize that you don't have a job to go to anymore. At this point, the panic starts to creep into your bones and pricks at the back of your skull. You're mad at everything, the kids, your boss, yourself. You try to focus your blame away from the latter because dwelling on your own failings never gets you anywhere.

Getting up is a struggle in and of itself. The panic mixes with resentment that pours into your cells like cement, dragging you down into your sheets. You close your eyes and feel the grease of them between your eyelids. Your skin is disgusting but you just can't get up. You try to summon some kind of strength or motivation to move but every one that flits to the surface of your body is immediately extinguished by the damp coldness of your heart.

You go away for a while and come back then go away again, feeling the same heavy apathy down to your very marrow as you fade in and out. You barely notice the changing light as it filters through the window but you can sense it in your peripheral awareness. The clock is too far away from your face for you to read so you lose track of the time. Moving seems more and more of a task and you just don't want to try anymore. You aren't hungry, the ugly feeling of being in your own skin settles uneasily into the sheets around you, your eyes droop with the weight of a million moons, more specifically dense Alternian moons. A lance of homesickness stabs through you and you feel disgusted with yourself. Alternia's been gone forever and you should just get over it. It's gone, your home is gone, and it’s never coming back.

It occurs to you that you probably should get up and search for a new job and get on with your life but you find yourself sinking further and further, away from the light of reason and you think that maybe you'll be completely swallowed up by the darkness. At least then you wouldn't have to pretend to survive anymore.

You close your eyes and drift away.

\---

Eventually the physical demands of your body wretch you out of your cocoon. You’ve learned from past endeavors how long you can go without food and while you still don’t have an appetite, the gnawing in your abdomen is a constant throb now and so you know you have to get something inside you before your body eats itself to the bone. You drag yourself to your fridge and pull it open. The smell that comes out is atrocious and it takes you a moment to register it as spoiled milk. You curse to yourself and take the half-gallon out of its spot and dump it down the sink, wondering why you even bought milk in the first place when coffee creamer would work just as well. You can’t even remember that well how you were feeling the week prior to your blow-up at your (former) job, so maybe you were just uncharacteristically optimistic and decided to fuck it and indulge in milk for your coffee, the inherent lactose intolerance of trolls be damned.

You need to learn how to control your impulses better. But it is better to be impulsive on milk rather than actions leading to the dooming of your entire race. You sigh and continue going through the fridge, checking expiration dates and seeing if you can salvage anything that is past the date. When you are done, there is a shockingly small amount of food still in the fridge, and you know even less in the pantry (you weren’t that well-stocked to begin with). You need food, but you can survive for a while on what you have, if you ration things out. You’ll check your spending money and see how much you have.

You make yourself something quick to eat and go sit at your laptop. You mooch off your neighbor’s wifi, because he’s a dumbass and didn’t put a password on it, so that’s one less utility you have to pay for. Your email is empty of new messages, as normal. Sometimes, you wonder why you even check.

Trollian is technically installed on the laptop, as is skype, but you never sign on. You did in the beginning, but when contacts grew scarcer and scarcer you quickly got the message. If you ever needed more space on your hard drive, those would be the first programs to go. If your past needs to find you (which they won’t) there are other ways to do it.

Going over your bank account and the carefully constructed spreadsheet you created for budgeting, you groan and you look at the upcoming rent payment, remembering that you don’t have a job anymore. You still feel unbelievably shitty about that, but what’s happened has happened, so you’ll just have to deal with it. There should be somewhere else that’s hiring. You live in a pretty big city. 

In the meantime, you’ll just have to go out and sell yourself. The regularity of your ritual is comforting in its own way, you’ve learned. You sigh and push your glasses up on your face, rubbing at your eyes. You’ll have to go out tonight, probably. You’ve lost precious time while you were stuck in your bed, unable to bring yourself to move. The thought makes you want to fall back into your covers and refuse to get out. Again. Damn it. The weight of living sits uncomfortably in your chest but you take a deep breath and pull yourself up to get ready. You have work to do.

That night you are wrecked by a clumsy tealblood who barely manages to pick your psyche back together but pays well. You take a small bit of that money and buy yourself a case of cheap beer and drink until the dull ache behind your sternum is softened by the alcohol and you feel soft-edged and content for once.

 

\---

 

The next few weeks go by in a similar manner, a routine composed of bad health decisions (you really can’t be half-assed to give a fuck about your health because why would you want to extend your already obnoxiously long lifespan), manufactured mental breakdowns for the benefit of others, and job-hunting. The latter two make you feel rough and dirty which leads you to do more of the former, but honestly it’s not too much worse than what you subjected yourself to while actually employed so you don’t worry that much.

You follow a few false leads in the job market field, scanning the wanted ads every day and looking for places you know will even think about hiring a highblood troll (you need to start calling yourself a coldblood, that’s what the human paperwork says). Your mind is swimming in job applications, in questionnaires and previous work experience, but you keep on looking. It’s hard finding someplace that will even consider your application, but you know that making a good impression during the interview is the hard part, even if the fact that they even looked over your application is a damn good sign. You eventually get a call from a decently sized retailer on the other side of town from your apartment, and you set up the interview with a little more gusto than is strictly necessary. You are just utterly weary to your bones of looking for a job and you want to be able to scale back on your nightly work.

The interview goes surprisingly well. You wrap yourself up in the most unobtrusive way you can manage, absolutely no jewelry and perfectly human clothes. You can’t really do anything about your height, but if you make sure to carry yourself in a way that doesn’t force your shoulders back and give you an air of superiority, you find that the results are usually better.

Your interviewer makes it clear that she has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to discrimination. You are pleasantly surprised and don’t quite manage to hide your surprise. She laughs at your raised eyebrows rather than doesn’t give you any kind of glare for them. Throughout the interview she makes you feel at ease. Perhaps the novelty of having someone seem to care for once is just too great, but you can’t help but feel as though you are letting your guard down too easy. You can’t let the tension that runs through the ropes of your body lax fully, however with each missed opportunity for a subtle jab at your trollness, you find yourself wanting to. The interview leaves you twisted round in confusion but also hope (ha fucking ha) for the future. She finishes her questions and shuffles her papers while you try to pour yourself back together.

“Well, Mr. Ampora, it has been a delight talking with you,” she says, looking you right in the eye, condescension refreshingly missing from her own gaze. You don’t even flinch away, not even a little. 

“Thank you very much for your time,” you give your customary response and stand up to get ready to leave.

She reaches out one hand, which you take and shake firmly (but not too firmly, because bruising a human’s hand is a first-class ticket to unemployment and harassment, you’ve learned your lesson in that field). From your higher standing position, you notice a picture sitting angled on her desk of what seems to be two human children and one with grey skin and hooked orange horns. You want to ask about it, but the politeness and fear that’s been drilled into you from the few sweeps you’ve lived with humans keeps your mouth shut. The fact that the little troll girl in the picture has relatively highblood features and that her picture is proudly displayed on your interviewer’s desk does put a lot of the events of your interview into context.

“You’ll get a call from us in a few days if you get the job, then we can set up your hours and get you working as soon as you can.” With that, she gives you a wink that leaves you reeling, trying to decipher its meaning, and you’re still trying to figure it out as you leave the office.

You get the phone call a few days later and set up to have orientation in two days. You are relieved to have a stable and legal source of income again. Life is looking up for you, at least a little bit, and you feel for once as though your life isn’t completely a piece of shit.

 

\---

 

Your new clerk position is at a human store with a local flair in a relatively well-off part of the city. The streets, you notice as you walk to the door, are actually pretty clean, and the surrounding buildings look well-taken care of. Honestly, a good half of you is still in shock that you landed a job in this side of town, with this much dignity. You regularly thank whatever supreme being must be watching you (because no one gets this much fucking karma thrown at them without one) that you haven’t had to succumb to the worst jobs yet. You are still doing well enough that you don’t have to.

The passerby stare at you as you walk by and you keep your head down, hunched into yourself as to protect yourself from their eyes. You’re out of place here, they don’t want you here, you don’t belong. The sad thing is, being in upscale neighborhoods stings of your sweeps on Alternia, of visiting the blueblood sector where Vriska lived when she was still your kismesis, of a gilded shipwreck where you lived. You aren’t unfamiliar with luxury, which makes the alienation you feel as you walk down the human neighborhood that much sharper. 

You pull your jacket across yourself a little tighter, even though the weather isn’t actually all that cold.

Inside the store building you feel better. You can even see a troll working behind a check-out counter, and give her a short nod. She looks at you and quirks her mouth up at the corner then returns to what she was doing behind the counter. The store sells books, clothes, jewelry, and local artisan pieces. From what you know, the store is indeed a franchise, but a pretty small one, with only a handful of regional locations, and a penchant for donating to various activism causes. You suppose that explains the troll-friendly atmosphere of the place.

Orientation is with the woman who gave you your interview. She is just as smiling and relaxed as she was then, wearing her hair tied low at her neck with wisps falling down to frame her face. You try to remember her name, but your brain keeps refusing to conjure it for you and you refuse to look at her nametag out of pride (you have a few things that you can still indulge your pride in).

You focus especially on the anti-harassment policy at the store. After your last job, you are hyper-aware of the ramifications of not checking, although you are pretty sure there was procedure for reporting things at your last place and your boss just refused to follow his guidelines. But you are tentatively optimistic for this job.

“We have a strict, no-nonsense, deal about this kind of thing here. If anyone does anything to you that you find uncomfortable, tell the manager immediately. If it’s another employee, especially, tell us. We have a three strike rule, depending on the severity of the infraction. If it’s bad enough, one instance will be all that’s needed to get let go. Do you understand?” The woman finishes and takes a sip from her mug of coffee. You nod and sign your human alphabet signature on the correct line.

“Good. Now, do you want to meet your coworkers? The ones who are working right now anyway,” she says, standing up and clearing away the papers on her desk. You follow her out and around the store. There aren’t many customers in the shop at the moment, so you assume that your new boss is free to pull aside her employees for a few moments. You learn that the troll behind the counter is named Ailisa and around her wide eyes, magnified by glasses that rival those of your adolescence, you can see an olive ring around her pupils. There’s another troll working in the storerooms, an honest-to-god blueblood named Hanneh who has none of the sharpness you remember from Vriska or the massiveness of Equius. There are a whole slew of human coworkers as well, old and young, ranging the whole gambit of shades you’ve seen humans exist in. They all greet you warmly and tell you they are excited to work with you, and even though you can see some hesitation in some of their eyes you can already tell that this job is going to be much better than your last one and that realization leaves your head spinning slightly. You’ve gotten so used to working through the stares and the whispers and just making due, that on some level you can’t even fathom a place where you don’t have to suppress your thoughts and wrap yourself protectively.

The last employee you meet is outside on break when your impromptu tour begins and he comes in after you’ve met everyone else.

“Oh, there he is. I was a little worried. Eridan, this is our last employee here,” your boss chirps and gestures to the troll to come meet you. He’s a little far away for you to fully see but there is something in the way he walks that burns at the corners of your mind. When he steps in front of you, the small burn shorts out your brain and you can barely think.

“This is Karkat. Karkat, this is Eridan- He’s going to be working here now.”

You are tense as fishing wire as Kar- Karkat, fucking Karkat Vantas, looks at you, recognition burning in his eyes as he takes you in. You can’t breathe, you are sinking and drowning. There is something strange written on Karkat’s face, something like disgust or pity if you think hopefully, and you have to get away. You stumble out an excuse to leave (“I have to go to the restroom, I’m very sorry, I’ll meet you back in your office”) and you abscond the fuck away from the judging glance of your past.

Life just fucking hates you.


End file.
